Extending Revised Affine Arithmetic for fast reliable ray-tracing of procedurally defined implicit surfaces

Authors: Fryazinov, O., Pasko, A. and Comninos, P.

Journal: GRAPP 2010 - Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications

Pages: 199-207

ISBN: 9789896740269

Abstract:

Fast and reliable rendering of implicit surfaces is an important research area in the field of implicit modelling. Direct rendering, namely ray-tracing, is shown to be a suitable technique for obtaining good-quality visualisations of implicit surfaces. We present a technique for reliable ray-tracing of arbitrary procedurally defined implicit surfaces by using a modification of Affine Arithmetic called Revised Affine Arithmetic. A wide range of procedurally defined implicit objects can be rendered using this technique including polynomial surfaces, constructive solids, pseudo-random objects, procedurally defined microstructures, and others. We compare our technique with other reliable techniques based on Interval and Affine Arithmetic to show that our technique provides the fastest, while still reliable, ray-surface intersections and ray-tracing. We also suggest possible modifications for the GPU implementation of this technique for real-time rendering of relatively simple implicit models and for near real-time rendering of complex implicit models.

Source: Scopus